One bag. A carry-on, nothing checked, because the Sunday flight does not forgive a lost case. The suit flies in a garment sleeve; the hotel laundry on Thursday night returns the shirts for Friday. The weekend is one pair of pants that are not the suit’s, two tops and a thin layer.
The suit and the shoes. Dark leather sneakers pass under a suit almost anywhere and walk 20 kilometers on Saturday. Leave the dress shoes at home; the jacket does Friday dinner and then stays in the bag.
The hotel trap. Business districts are built to empty. Canary Wharf, La Défense, Marunouchi and Pudong are quiet by Friday evening and many of the restaurants that fed the week shut on Saturday. Check out Friday morning, leave the case with the concierge, and book two nights where the city lives: Shoreditch or the South Bank, the Marais, Shibuya or Shinjuku, the former French Concession.
Friday evening is the first night out. The last meeting ends at five; do not eat at the hotel bar. Drop the bag at the weekend hotel and walk to dinner; Saturday has no alarm. In Tokyo that is an izakaya alley; in Madrid dinner is not until nine anyway; in Bangkok a night market is still at full strength at eleven.
The day trip or the neighborhood. Some cities reward leaving. Kamakura is about an hour from Tokyo, Toledo about half an hour from Madrid by fast train, Versailles about 40 minutes from Paris, Haarlem a quarter of an hour from Amsterdam, Ostia Antica half an hour from Rome. Others reward staying: in New York, London, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Mexico City one neighborhood fills the day. Pick one and skip the rest.
Expensing. The company pays until the handshake. The exception is the flight: a Sunday flight home is often cheaper than Friday evening’s, and finance will usually take the saving. Ask by email before you book and keep the weekend on a personal card so the Monday claim takes five minutes.
The Sunday flight and the early check-out. Check-out is 11 a.m. or noon; the bag goes to the concierge and the afternoon is yours. Pick a flight late enough for lunch that still lands before midnight, so Monday exists. Sunday roads are quiet but Sunday trains run thinner; check the schedule.
On the day. Put the airport train on Sunday’s plan as a stop with a time. Waystop’s hours check will tell you if the lunch you chose is closed on Sundays, which many are.